Hüsker Dü DatabaseMagazine articles & interviews

New Musical Express, 01 Sep 1984

Transcriber's note:
Biba Kopf was the pseudonym of NME writer Chris Bohn. Bohn had been a staff
writer, under his real name, until 1983. He was also largely responsible for
the 15 Sep issue, which was devoted to "hardcore"
and included an interview with HD. [Transcribed by Zvia Admon.]

ZEN AND THE ART OF GOING ULTRANOVA!

Hüsker Dü
Zen Arcade (SST - double US import)

by Biba Kopf

People tell me these are bad times to be young in. To wit I reply I've never
known them to be better. Taking into account the young's boundless enthusiasm
for mischief the opportunities afforded are endless.

Social contracts burnt, no job opportunities, all that time to kill -
the inner and outer landscapes Hüsker Dü words traverse may be
familiar, but the ferocity of their response bespeaks something else
altogether: a savaging of the ties that bind. Cut loose anything might happen.
Push them too hard and it probably will.

From Minneapolis, Hüsker Dü relocate themselves, however, in the
vicinity of the small town ready to blow in Jonathan Kaplan's teen explosion
[sic] picture Over The Edge, which inevitably ended in pitched battle
between a-dolts (sic) and young. If 'Zen Arcade' doesn't end in rioting, it
doesn't mean there isn't a riotous time to be had here.

Having passed through ultracore, broken all landspeed records and burst the
eight miles high thrashold, Hüsker Dü either had to go nova or
reconsider their strategy. Typically, they've somehow managed both, even made
going nova their strategy and redeployed their tremendous speed without
sacrificing anything in strike power. The change is slight but telling. Where
they were once rabid they are now rapid: they've replaced dirty germ warfare
with a cleaner cut and thrust.

All the healthier for it, Hüsker Dü presently range freer and
faster. 'Zen Arcade' crosses vast tracts of wasteland, calls in on countless
dulltowns. To its immense credit it forsakes the easy route of retreading
Grandmaster Flash's glitzy inner city glam grime and instead gets to grips with
a far more pervasive greyness.

That these quickfire missives scattershot across four sides don't become
unrelentingly bleak, then, is down to Hüsker Dü's distillation of
grey, wasted lives into concentrated instants of minimal duration but greater
quality. They hone in on emotional flashpoints - be it personal disappointments
or a newsflash - and edit them into songs of cartoon bubble efficiency and
invigorating directness.

Because they write and record fast - 23 songs mostly done in one take over
85 hours! - they're necessarily raw and sometimes incomplete, but they have the
immedacy of concise diary entries. In their case the diaries belong to
nobodies, the nobodies of the silent majorities refusing to stay silent any
longer. They enter into them fragments about broken down affairs, broken down
homes, closed down mill towns and reported fears of the ultimate shutdown. But
if all these "downs" have driven them into a corner, it has so much buckled
their spirit as strenghtened their resolve to keep on fighting.

In fact, this extraordinary power trio seem to operate best with their backs
to the wall. Bob Mould's guitar sputters and splinters at earpiercing feedback
into a thousand pieces, giving the impression of Hüsker Dü being a
far larger and more forbidding unit than it is.